Managing Teams – Brake/Accelerator Pedal Way
“You have not sticked to your timeliness! you have been silent in the customer interaction calls!”, recalling the interaction with the manager, a team member says with disgust, “Aaargh! the team sucks! the manager sucks! I have no future in this team!”. This can be overheard from members of most prestigious current day delivery project teams in any organization after an appraisal or inter personal review meetings. Quite evidently both the manager and team member seem to be dissatisfied with the outcome of the meeting.
To some extent, the onus of how team member chose to what he/she has done till date, in the team, is very much with the manager. Most managers view the performance of their team members as cars with automated gears and controls on a highway called project delivery. But the reality is that members of team are most like cars with manual gears and control systems. Controlling and calibrating each component of a control system increases the efficiency of a car. Likewise each team member has to be nurtured, identifying the capacity factor each of these control systems, so that the outcome of such soul stirring meetings are not grumbles and mumbles, but praise and respect for each other.
Its everybody guess that car have a foot brake and accelerator with varying dimensions. In fact the surface area of a foot brake is more than that of an accelerator. In a way a car’s foot brake symbolizes the negative tenets of your team member and the accelerator, the positive qualities denoting the freedom to achieve something great. Most project manager falter in identifying which are brakes and accelerators, going on by bigger and visible surface area as that of an accelerator. They try pedaling the brake, thinking they are pressing the accelerator and can better control the team member and ignore on the actuals, he/she is capable of. The more they press the brake, the more the negative energies and currents flow, and the more the friction develops. At the end of the game, everybody is dissatisfied and frustrated.
Identifying an accelerator is little tedious and time-consuming, during which the manager has to engage the member to think and contribute freely. The better option is to make him/her a stakeholder in the delivery either through incentives or giveaways. The other complimenting options would be to monitor him/her closely as a friend which counts to delivery.